Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/583

Rh San Luis will interest a traveller coming from the North as a thoroughly representative metropolis, in streets and architecture, of Southern Mexico. It contains numerous churches, which possess excellent paintings, a fine cathedral, and an attractive alameda. The famous silver mines of Potosi, now fallen in and neglected, in a cerro within sight of the city, once produced enormously, and from one of them, it is said, was obtained the largest piece of solid gold ever found in America. It was sent to the king of Spain, who in return gave a large clock, which may be seen in the cathedral to-day. The city has a population of forty-five thousand, and is destined to be an important railway centre, as not only does the National, coming down from the north, connect it with Monterey and the United States, and, passing through, extend its trade to Mexico City, but a branch of the Central, leaving the trunk line at Leon, runs through to Tampico, 300 miles distant, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Passing beyond the southern border of the State of San Luis, we enter the great and famous hacienda of Jaral, which was—perhaps is now—the largest in Mexico. Half a century ago, its proprietor, the Marquis of Jaral, was reputed the largest landowner in the world, owning over three hundred thousand head of live stock, and slaughtering annually sixty thousand sheep and goats. His hospitality was unbounded, but his oppression of the peons of his estate bore heavily upon them; he even razed the houses of a village, and scattered the inhabitants, to prevent them from getting a town charter, which would give them control of the land.

Next south is the town of San Felipe, 6,900 feet above the sea, and next Dolores Hidalgo, chiefly remarkable as the parish of the Mexican patriot, Padre Hidalgo, where the first note of liberty was sounded, in September, 1810. Directly south, situated in the midst of a fertile and beautiful champaign, is the flourishing city of Celaya, containing thirty thousand inhabitants. Here the two great railroads meet and cross; the Central coming up from Queretaro and Mexico, and the National from Acambaro and the capital. By the former it is 180 miles to Mexico City, passing through Queretaro, ancient Tula, and the